Invest in the Mind

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There are 3 things we can train. We can train our body, our craft, and our mind. And of those 3, training our mind so that we can perform at our optimal level regardless of what life throws at us is something that many of us don't pay enough attention to. Yet it's this mindset training that can have a transformational impact on our lives and on our work. Hi everyone, I'm Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, and welcome to Actionable Intelligence. My guest today is Michael Gervais, a high-performance psychologist who works with some of the top performers in the world, training the mindset skills and practices that are essential to pursuing and revealing one's potential. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs. By the end of today's show, you'll learn about some of the key ways we can train our mind to perform at our highest level. Okay, let's get started. Well, Mike, when I think about this idea of human potential and maximizing and achieving top performance, I think back to some of the names from, say, 50, 70 years ago, people like Abraham Maslow, I think about places like the Esselen Institute, where they brought in a lot of people to talk about maximizing human potential. And then we have people like you who are really advancing on top of some of the things that have been done in years past. And I think you're taking the angle more on the achieving top performance in high-stakes situations. So I'd love to hear from you in terms of what are you doing? What are we learning today, maybe with some of the newer technology? How are we building upon some of the advances from 50 to 70 years ago based on what's happening today?

Well, first, Steve, thank you for including me in this conversation in your community. And to directly answer that question is that right now is a very exciting time for psychology. And the reason it's so exciting is because we're sitting on, you know, really good science. And that science is beginning to have a better understanding of what's the difference between, let's say, suffering as a human versus optimization. And it's not like you sit in one camp or the other. Humans range across the experience between there. But right now, it's really exciting because some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers on the planet are raising their hand to say, hey, listen, psychology is really important. And if you want to live toward the upper reaches of your potential, you gotta get down with the mind. You've gotta like invest in it. What's exciting is that the extraordinaries are raising their hand. The science is keeping pace. And then we've got a third variable, which is technology as feedback loops. And we've got a fourth variable, which is coming forward, which are some of the ancient traditions both from first people as well as from some of the mindfulness practices as well. And so it's this really interesting time right now between science, technology, best case examples of the extraordinary saying that the mind matters, as well as some of the ancient traditions that we would be amiss to not include.

Well, speaking of those ancient traditions, let's go back 2,000 years, 2,500 years. What did the ancients know back then that is still true to today?

That the search for meaning and understanding and purpose and why we're here, all of that is a work in progress. And the same questions that they had then, many of them we have now, other than maybe we're a bit more clear about how gravity works, we're a bit more clear about how the solar system works, but all of those are still up for grabs. But when it comes to psychology and the human experience, they were asking questions about purpose and meaning, And one of the ways that I think what you're talking about here is mindfulness as one of the practices. All 11 of the world religions have some sort of contemplative mindfulness practice and mindfulness. This is not just a spiritual practice or religious practice. This is very much, you can choose if you want a secular path or spiritual path on mindfulness, but mindfulness back in the ancient traditions was like, okay, What can we do as a practice to be more attuned to the present moment, more connected to now? Because if I can bring my mind and train my mind to be now more often, then I'm going to get to the truth of some stuff. And then what some of the samurai warriors and the Zen traditions found out is that, oh, you know what? If you're also present, if your mind is more conditioned to be in the present moment more often, oh, you're going to perform better as well. So there's this unique blend between the deep questions in life, sorting out wisdom through the present moment, and then sorting out high performance as, let's call it, the gold dust of being present. And the gold is really living life fully in the present moment. And if you stitch enough moments together, you end up getting to some wisdom. But along the path, if you have some opportunities to express high performance and across conditions, meaning calm conditions to rugged and hostile conditions, is definitely an asset. So I think what I just said, there's a lot in there, and I'm happy to pick that apart wherever we can, but that's the net of why the ancient traditions have much to teach us still today.

So speaking of the present moment, you've talked a lot about that on your podcast and in a lot of your writing. How do you practice that? And I'd love to hear, I know you're a surfer. I know you spend a lot of time in the water Is there something about surfing or being in nature that has taught you how to be in the present moment?

When I was first introduced to mindfulness about 25 years ago, I was a complete skeptic. I did not understand like how sitting still was going to offer me— like I have this relentless, almost unsettled inner drive to go do. And so like achievement-based, if you will. But I needed some science to say this is actually what's taking place. Some of your audience is very skilled at mindfulness and some are like, ah, I know it's good for me, but I just can't quite organize my life to get around to it more often. And so wherever somebody is, maybe this will help, is that the science is really clear that those that practice mindfulness have an increased frequency of flow state. Flow, meaning the most optimal state a human can be in. Those that practice mindfulness report a decrease in fatigue and increase in mood stability, better management of emotions, better reactivity to stress. They report better parenting skills. I mean, the list goes on. Better enhanced concentration, better attentional skills, better performance in high-stakes environments. I mean, it— the science is compelling. Not only does it change performance, output, but it's also shaping and changing the brain by shaping and changing both size and structure of our anatomy, as well as neuroelectricity in the brain and throughout the body, as well as chemical impact. So it's quite amazing, the science. I just today was on a call with a leading stem cell practitioner, medical director of a stem cell research center that is also doing application. And they have some research hinting that mindfulness is actually extending telomeres and amplifying stem cells. Within our body. I mean, both of those are kind of at tier 0 for vitality, for thinking clearly, for cognitive processing. I could go on about the science, but I'll stop there. The practice, Steve, is really simple. And if you're going to look at science, there's like some indicating research that says 8 minutes is a minimal effective dose, which is not the right way way to think about this beautiful science meeting art meeting practice. But minimally dose might be 8 minutes a day, and ideal is 20+. So here's how I practice. Long way to get to it is I just follow my breath one breath at a time, and I'll be hard-pressed if I can sit down and get 2 in a row, right? And so when my mind wanders from the breath, then just come right back to it. And that's like the training wheels. That's like the beginnings. And it's also the heavy lifting of mindfulness training, is when your mind wanders, okay, no problems. Bring it back. Bring it back to what? Bring all of your focus and essence back to, let's say, the inhale or the exhale. And you end up learning how your thoughts work with your emotions, how they impact and infuse and influence each other. And when you have a better understanding how thoughts and emotions work together, those two end up impacting behavior. And when thoughts, emotions, and behavior are humming together, or they're desyncopated together, that impacts performance. And so if you wanna understand how to be a better performer in life, how to live more presently, it's gonna start with understanding your thoughts and how they influence your emotions and vice versa. So this is the building blocks of being able to find freedom to perform and express in any environment, whether it's a boardroom, a living room, out back in the country of Mother Nature. Mother Nature, if you're paying attention, will absolutely force you to be in the present moment. So surfing is one small example, but because every wave is different, Mother Nature, meaning the ocean, offers incredibly swift and powerful consequences if you're off. Same in other conditions— hiking, this, that, and the other, backcountry skiing, whatever it might be. If you're off or misattuned, then there are consequences. And so Mother Nature is a great way to also work through the practice of being present.

So as you think about this idea of being present, it's something that I would say would go back thousands of years to maybe some of the Eastern mystics, let's say. Now, back then, I don't think— correct me if I'm wrong— but they weren't really thinking about mindfulness or just being in the moment as a tactic to increase personal performance. So how do we keep this idea of mindfulness, being present, as an end in and of itself versus objectifying it to, this is a tactic for me to be a better performer in the arena.

You just kind of hit the nail on the head about what's happening right now to many of the conversations and practices around mindfulness, that it's used as a tactic, it's used as a shortcut or a hack or something. And the conversation really is about a performative output as opposed to a being output. So I think if you can just get your arms around the, Mindfulness is about awareness. It's an awareness practice. It's a concentration practice. It's those two things. And those, both of those are required to be in the present moment. And I'll pause there for a moment and then I'll come back because being in the present moment, why is that so important? Because that is where high performance is expressed. So thinking about the modern performer, okay, that's cool. But the second is that's where wisdom is revealed. And then the third, it's where all things that are amazing are experienced. So without having the ability to be in the present moment, we miss wisdom, we miss true high performance, and we miss all of the really amazing experiences in life. So the present moment is the keyhole and understanding how to get there more often is the skill required to be able to enter that keyhole more often. You're right on the money though. If we go back to the original question about using it as a tactic, because If we're living 2,600 years ago, the tactic then was more about to get to peace and joy and reveal the wisdom that lies dormant. And that is still available for us, and it's still part of the essence of the practice. And many people are entering that practice because they're stressed out. They're looking for some anxiety relief. They're looking for some sort of better sleeping. Well, I mean, okay, if that's what's going to get you there, cool. If you can hang there a little bit longer than maybe you thought, you're going to find some other stuff though. And so at one level, I'm really happy for the conversations around mindfulness. And at the same time, I'm like, hey, make sure that we're honoring both pillars, which is awareness and wisdom. You know, let's make sure we're getting to both of those.

I think about my experience with mindfulness and being present going back about 20 years ago when I was out in your neck of the woods, I was climbing Mount Rainier for the first time. And my goal was like most people that want to climb Mount Rainier, I want to get to the summit. That was the focus goal. I'm going to get to the summit. Well, I did get to the summit, but I was just so exhausted. I was just so focused on the goal that I didn't enjoy the journey, so to speak. And so when I got back down to the bottom, I'm like, Man, that was super hard. And I got a few pictures, but I like hardly remember anything about the experience. And then I told myself, look, if I do this again, the goal is not going to be to reach the top. The goal is just to be there, to experience it, to make sure I can see everything around me. And if I get to the top, fine. But if I don't, I'm going to enjoy the journey. You know, the old cliché, it's the journey, not the destination. So the second and third time I went into other mountains, it was just all about being totally in the moment, and I took the goal out of it, and it was so much more enjoyable. So maybe that's what you're saying here. And I would still reach the top, but it wasn't the focus. But I think just being present and aware and absorbing everything around me, I think helped me reach the goal anyway, even though that wasn't the objective of it. Does that make sense?

Oh yeah, for sure. And it is possible to have both. Like, the idea is to be able to experience the upper reaches of your potential And being present is one of the mechanisms that does help explore those reaches. And those reaches can be like upper capabilities as well as the depths of wisdom. So, it goes both ways for sure. And in the modern workforce right now, people, not just because of the political climate or because of COVID but it is an amplifier of what I'm about to say, is people People are tired. Humans are working in the modern workforce just about as hard as we can work. And we're about as defragmented as we can be. And we are pulling apart at the seams in many ways. And that is true even for those who have done the deep work to say, I'm lining up my work ethic with purpose and meaning. So even if you have that alignment, people are like, listen, I'm fatigued. I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, I'm under-recovered and overworked, overstressed. And in elite sport, we're very particular. Everybody in elite sport works really hard, but we spend a lot of time both in science and application of recovery. So the science of recovery is talked about far more than you might imagine because it is nascent or it's a footnote in Western modern business. It is not something that we are doing properly. And so it's almost like an extra, like, yeah, yeah, get your sleep, everybody. It's important. But then there's a scheduling of meetings across time zones that's not allowing people to get even close to 7 hours of sleep. So I share this with you is that the present moment also offers a second bit of gold dust, which is when you're in the present moment, you're expending less energy. When your body is present but your mind is somewhere else trying to solve something or figure something out, you are spending more energy, 1.5, 1.25%. We don't know the actual number. So it's a bit like if you go back to an old car and the carburetor, you've got some gasoline or fuel that's sitting on the carburetor. And if you open up that carburetor, fuel's just running through. But if you don't have the gearbox, a proper spark or gearbox to make it work, the car is not going to go anywhere, but you're just ripping through fuel. And I know that we're dealing with different types of engines nowadays. No longer are we working with the old carburetors, but that's how this is working. And I'm just, I just want to put that note out there. I see people, I know how stressed and overworked and under-recovered they are. And mindfulness is one, I'd say it's necessary, but not sufficient for a proper recovery game?

Yeah, each year I start the year and I come up with 3 words that really kind of set the tone and give me a theme for the year. And one of my words this year was pace, which is right in line with what you're talking about, because I tend to work out a lot and I tend to not rest as much as I should. And, you know, listening to people like you and just the importance of recovery, I thought pace. So, I got to make sure I don't burn myself out. I have rest in there. And, you know, it's in between the workouts that the muscles are building, you know, not during the workout. So anyway, yeah, this whole idea of recovery, I think, is so important. So kind of speaking along those lines, in terms of the type of training we can do, I've heard you talk about there's really 3 things that we can train. We can train our craft, we can train our mind, and we can train our body. So I'd love for you to compare and contrast how elite athletes think about and allocate their time in training in those three areas compared to, let's say, in the corporate world? 'Cause I know you spend a lot of time in corporate America. You work with very successful people in corporate America. How do you see elite athletes focus and train in those three areas versus what, say, you know, other people in the business world or other people outside of the sports arena where do they allocate? Is there a mismatch between what you see there?

Yeah, that's a cool question. So body, craft, and mind as the 3 verticals that we can train. And in elite sport, craft and body is spent majority of the time. And let me do 20 years ago. Craft and body were the majority of training, and mind was kind of leftover. You know, it's important, but not one of the center hubs. I'd be hard-pressed right now in elite sport to find an athlete or a coach that doesn't nod their head up and down emphatically about the importance of training the mind, of having a great mind. What does that mean? It means a mind that can operate at full speed, that can pivot and adjust, that can be creative, that can solve problems, that can trust, that knows how to be confident, how to find and downregulate to a sense of calm so we're not overly anxious, jittery, hyped up. All of that is— those are everything I just mentioned is a trainable skill. So if you have some really amazing parents or you are absolutely gifted with a first or second coach in sport that taught you how to train your mind, but maybe they didn't even know it, maybe they didn't take a course, but they just kind of got lucky with it, then you're one of the 1%ers that does not need to actually train the mind. My experience though is that most parents are loving and good and want to do well and well-intended, but they never took any formal training. They don't really know how their mind works, let alone how to condition and train the mind of a 12-year-old It's, you know, pushing every button known to man. So I think that it's an easy leap to say right now what's happening is the extraordinaries are saying, no, I'm not leaving my mind up to chance. I'm not just going to train my body and my craft and kind of go into a performative environment and hope and worry and think that it's going to be okay from a mindset. I'm not going to allow that to be a choke point. And so they're doubling down. They're doing their work. And this is not about reading a book on mindset or psychology. This is not about reading a book from one of the greats such as Da Vinci and/or Michael Jordan. It's not about reading about their lifestyle. I'm talking about training from a very tangible standpoint, okay? Sets and reps. So there's two parts to psychology. There's self-discovery, where you go learn about who you are. What are your core principles in life? What are your character strengths? What are the values that you work from? What's the vision of your future look like that you're working toward? I'm not doing woo-woo psychology here. Those are just actually very tangible questions to sort out. And once you have those things sorted out, then you can begin to train with an expedited output sets and reps, training calm, training confidence, training deep focus, training optimism. Optimism is at the center of mental toughness. I can't find a world-class athlete that is pessimistic. There are some cynics, but fundamentally, like 99.9% of those on the world stage, which is a— I know I'm being egregious with these numbers, but I'm doing that for a reason because like I can't find pessimists. So that means by definition they're optimists. They believe the future is going to work out and that's why they're chipping in So much trust and so much risk to be vulnerable enough to try when millions are watching, when contracts are on the line, when mistakes will get you booted quickly. And they are able to be vulnerable in those moments, to let it unfold, and to trust their abilities to adjust to the unpredictable, unfolding unknown.. So we have lots to learn from elite athletes from that standpoint, not that they can do the extraordinary, but how they organize their life to be extraordinary so that they can meet the moment, whatever that moment is. Now, when we flip over to the business world, here's an easy corollary. Most teams nowadays have a head technical coach, lots of technical, uh, support staff, assistant coaches. There's a strength and conditioning head coach. He or she has some support staff. There's a medical director and a team of medical professionals. There is the athletic trainer and a team of folks to support. There is the nutrition and chef and a dietitian and their team. And there's a sports psychologist as well. Okay. Now there's also some sports science involved in there that I didn't include and other support staff. Okay. Where's the sports psychologist in elite business? Call it a performance psychologist. Where are they? We got bosses, we got managers, we got directors, we got strategists, you know, we've got that. We've got some, some idea. Some of the big, big cultures have a nice chef and kitchen and services. And, you know, we've got an HR thing that we were terrified to go to, right? Because there's some consequences sometimes around HR. But so we got an HR function that has some sort of EAP psychology for the ones that are struggling. Oh, that's right, we call it life coaches. That's what we're doing. But those are kind of individual, and no offense to life coaches, I'm sure that you've got some in your audience. And I think that if you really want to get down into the weeds, you got to stand on some really strong science. And so I get a little concerned, and there's plenty of very, very skilled coaches. And I know that you've spent some time doing that as well, Steve, but as a systemic solution, they tend not to be part of most organizations. And if you're part of an organization that has it, fortunate, really fortunate. Otherwise, I would say go get with somebody. You got to go find somebody on your own that's going to help you with the psychology of excellence. And that science is no longer woo-woo, it's very concrete. You can put some handles on how to train your mind.

Now, I want to touch on this idea of optimism. I've heard you talk about, you just said here, that almost every elite athlete, if not every elite athlete that you've worked with, is optimistic. Now, I've also heard you say, and I've got a quote here that I'm going to read, you said, we've got to earn the right to be optimistic by finding the things that can be good and building a framework around that, as opposed to this naive, hey, just be positive, everything's good. So when you say, I love this phrase, we've got to earn the right to be optimistic. So tell me a little bit more about what do you mean by that?

Yeah, good, Steve, doing some homework on me. Yeah. Okay, good. So we're not born optimistic or pessimistic. There might be a genetic kind of predisposition to lean one way or the other, but it is a learned skill. So it's the skill of how you think about your future. So you fundamentally think about your future, ah, something's good about to take place, it's going to work out. Or you fundamentally believe that doom and gloom and danger and risk is going to get the best of you. More colloquial, it tends to not work out, so I got to brace myself. So optimism and pessimism, those are the only two options, are learned. And so naive optimism is incredibly dangerous. Without doing and experiencing hard things and having a sense of how you can influence it working out. It's not like it just works out. You have to become an agent. You have to become a, a co-contributor to it working out. So part of optimism is this belief that things work out because of your inner capabilities to make it so. And it doesn't mean that if you're, I don't know, in a really bad situation somewhere, that, you know what, I'm just going to kind of see how this happens. No, sometimes you got to fight. Sometimes you got to scrap. Sometimes you've got to, you know, in a, in a sport world, we call drop our hips and kind of get into it. Sometimes that's required. And I'm never saying or suggesting, you know, at the peril of another person. I'm not suggesting that at all. Matter of fact, if we double-click here for a moment, I want to challenge people to think about competition as a striving together, not as a standing over and celebrating somebody's loss for your gain, but more of the infinite approach that we need each other to figure out the razor's edge of reimagining humanity and what it means to be fully human toward the upper reaches of our capabilities. We need each other to do that. So that's how I think about competition, a shared experience where iron sharpens iron. You know, that tone, if you will. Okay, back into the narrative here is that if you believe that the future's gonna work out without people actually materially having done some work for it to be so, that is very dangerous. The opposite is the earned right, which is like, no, no, no, I've been through some hard things. I've been challenged. I know that if I stay in this and I keep giving it everything that I have, and I look at the people in it with me and I'm challenging them and they're challenging me to keep bringing everything we have to solve this, maybe it's an audacious goal or maybe it's this life of purpose that you're celebrating together or working towards together, that things tend to sort themselves out because you bring your complete mind, body, and craft into it. So you have to earn the right. And you can't earn the right by sitting in the cheap seats. You can't earn the right by being the critic and judge of the strong men and women and humans in the amphitheater. You have to be, as the beautiful poem from Teddy Roosevelt goes from 1908, like you have to be the human, the man in the arena, as he called it, which, you know, we can do better than just be gender neutral here. So I think that that's how you earn your scars. You earn your keep for optimism is by being in the center of the arena, whatever that is for you, and give yourself to the experience. And then, you know what makes it work better is if you've trained body, craft, and mind to your best abilities, and you got a lens that, hey, if I bring my mind, my body, and my craft towards the upper limits, that something good's gonna take place. So let me keep staying in it. So, that's a long way to respond to this very pithy thought that you shared with me about my quote coming back at me.

Yeah. No, that was super cool. So, I tend to think that I probably am predisposed to be pessimistic. And so, I've had to overcome that or try to battle that over time. And one of the things you talked about, be in the arena and you can't sit in the cheap seats. So, that's one of the reasons why I do try and exercise. I do try and put myself out in these uncomfortable environments out in the wilderness, out in the mountains, because I feel like, you know, if I can do that, those are the confidence builders to me that enable me to— when I get back to, I'm sitting at my desk and I'm doing work, it's like, I can do this, I got this, you know, because I've got some previous experiences that I can draw upon and say, yeah, remember when, you know. So I don't know if that's how you think about it, but at least that's what seems to work for me.

That is more related to trust trust of self and confidence, and another word I'll introduce called self-efficacy. It's more related to those, but I would say the framework you're operating from is great. Okay, if I could take it one more kind of notch up, I would say that if we stay with this trust thing for just a bit, doing hard things gives you the right to say that you can do hard things. So that's confidence. Confidence does not come from past success. It comes from what you say to yourself about a challenge that is earned. If you say, I think I might be able to get that thing done now, based on what? Based on kind of this fantasy appraisal? Well, that's going to not work out over time because you can't fake yourself out. But if you're like, that looks like something I could get down with, I could get after that, Based on what? I'll go back to the question. Based on that I've done hard things. A, B, C, D, hard things. And that looks hard, but I think I've got, you know, A1, B2, C3 skill. So that's how confidence works. It's not tricky. It's really not tricky. But for optimism, it's that if you've been through hard things and you know that the best way to think about the future is that, hey, I'm a problem solver, I figure things out, you know, like We will figure this out. I will figure this out. I will adjust. So you know what? Let me just start believing that it's gonna work out because I'm a co-creator of that. That's more of where optimism comes from. Confidence comes from doing hard things and earning the right to say I can do hard things. Okay, now one other level, if I could just go one more with you, Steve, is that we don't need to just go into the backcountry and wrestle with bears and saber through tigers anymore, to speak confidently and to trust ourselves. We can also earn trust of self by experiencing more time being vulnerable. So there's physical challenges toward our upper thresholds, wrestling with the bears, and then there's emotional challenges, and the upper thresholds there are being vulnerable with people that it's hard to be vulnerable with. And I'm not suggesting you start with dangerous people, because they're out there. I'm talking about like your most intimate relationships. Practice every day saying the thing that is a bit hard to say, you know, and not saying it in a way that— I don't like that thing that you're wearing. Okay, that's way too surface. It's about you and sharing your experience, your emotional experience with them. So vulnerability, emotional vulnerability, might be one of the great accelerants to knowing that you can do difficult things, because in the workplace we are paid for hard work, but we're paid for creative, critical problem solving. However, it's beyond the intellectual work, it's emotional. The reason the emotion piece sets up is when we need to have hard conversations with people about conflicting ideas. And if we bubble up and we're run by emotion and we can't think clearly or creatively or critically, and I don't mean critical of others but critical of the idea, if we can't do that and our emotion is winning, we're going to alienate people because we're coming from a place of frustration, intolerance, demand, judgment, irritability. And I've seen it over and over again in elite sport, is at the beginning of the year, new hire if you will, but a beginning of a year of a sport team, we lock arms, there's clarity of the mission, there's clarity of the vision, and we look around, we're like, yes, This is an amazing team. We can do this. Let's lock our arms. Let's get after it. And then as soon as somebody starts to feel stress, call it pressure, call it uncomfortable feelings— in sport, people like to say, hey man, you got me feeling some kind of way. It's like code for, like, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel, but I don't like it. When those types of feelings start to happen, people unlock their arms. Now, that doesn't only happen in locker rooms and on the playing field. It happens in boardrooms. It happens in hallways. It happens on Zoom calls. It happens on team calls, you know. So the emotional part of the game, emotional intelligence built on vulnerability and empathy, is an absolute accelerant to teams winning together.

Yeah, and you mentioned emotional intelligence. I know Daniel Goleman popularized that back, I think, maybe in the 1990s, and Brené Brown has talked a lot about this idea of vulnerability here in the past 10 years or so. I mean, it's a superpower, sort of, if you want to look at it that way. Yet it's so hard for a lot of us, myself included. And maybe that's why I do the backcountry stuff, because the physical stuff is easier for me to deal with than the emotional stuff. But you're right. I mean, you just stated it so eloquently there. That is something that we all need to be more open to. You know, people think of it as, you know, the soft stuff. Well, the soft stuff is the hard stuff. The soft stuff is Powerful stuff.

Yeah, Steve, you're so right on the money about like I've been down this path so long for me, for my life, 25 years in this craft of psychology that at first I was nauseated. I was so kind of— I didn't want to be part of psychology because it was soft and I don't want anything to do with the soft part of being human. I want to be, you know, kick-ass, take names, kind of. I was in that high achievement zone. Our mindset. And so I went and got a master's degree in sports science. And the dictum in sports science was that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So my master's degree, I'm like, at the end of that, I was like, that's not right though. It's really not right because I can't measure my mind, but I can manage it if I'm skilled up. So that I went back to psychology, got a PhD in psychology, specialization in sport, high performance, and high stakes environments. But it's not right. That if you can't see it or measure it, you can't manage it. I can measure my mind. I know my mind exists no differently than some of the brightest physicists know that gravity exists. They can't see it, but they see the artifact. They see the impact of it. And so same true is for you and you and me here is that we know we have a mind. We can't see it, but we know when our mind's not working in our favor, we start to constrict. We start to tighten up. And that's because, you know, there's this beautiful interplay between our brain and our mind, our hardware and our software, if you will, to oversimplify. And if our hardware runs our software, man, what a mistake. So our hardware is our brain. And if you don't have a strong software, strong mind, then the brain will win. And the brain's dictum is survival alone. Survival, period. I should say not like alone versus together, but survival, period. So to get the most out of this beautiful 3 pounds of tissue that sits on our skull, it's the most complicated, the most dynamic tissue slash supercomputer, if you want to shorthand it, in the world. We need a dynamic bit of software. And that's me saying, hey, it's time to level up the patchy bug work that your parents gave you from a software perspective, or your first coach, or one of your professors in high school or college. You know, we can do better. And so that's why I get excited about this very hard and challenging idea of upgrading our software. And there's nothing soft about it. It requires deep programming. And so what's cool is you have what— you have what it takes to do it. Everybody does. That's what's cool about it.

Yeah. And we've got people like you that are helping leading the way, that are help sharing the science behind it, as well as the benefit of it as well. So I appreciate that. I want to talk about this idea of a philosophy. So your business partner, Pete Carroll, you guys obviously have done a lot of work together. You've got a new Audible original that we're going to talk about here in just a moment. But I want to talk about this idea of a personal philosophy. I mean, I think it's a terrific idea. I've incorporated the concept in terms of how I think about my life as well. Describe to me what a philosophy means.

A philosophy is a fancy kind of ivory tower word that maybe goes back— you think about Socrates, maybe you maybe think about, you know, Aristotle or whatever. Like, philosophy, if we just bring it down to a more colloquial idea, is that it is the guiding principles for your life. That's it. So if you could get your guiding principles down on paper, that would be a significant amount of work. That would be an awesome bit of work to do. What are the principles that guide my thoughts, my words, and my actions? What are those principles? And nobody can give them to you. You have to say, like, these are them for me. And many of the world religions have very clear guiding principles. So you don't have to go too far to look at them. If you're not connected to one of the 11 world religions, no problem. You can do the intellectual work yourself and say, what are they? Now, they might not just jump out at you. And so that's one of the things that Coach Carol and I built in a program. So we built an 8-week online program which it walks you through a self-discovery process. It's about high performance, right? A self-discovery process and how to train your mental skills. And you know what I'd like to do, Steve, is I'd love to give 2 courses out to your audience. And so if you want to do a fun little competition where maybe they, they tag you, they tag me, and they tag Finding Mastery on social, and maybe just kind of, you know, I'll put it in your hands, and maybe they just— one reason why mindset is important to them, and we'll have some fun, and you can select the 2 folks in your community that you want to give the course to. It's an 8-week online course and I'll walk you through how to generate your philosophy, the mechanics of how to become more confident, to use your mind as one of the greatest assets that you, that you already possess. And so that could be fun. I'd like to do that with you. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Cool. And so back to your question is that a philosophy is the set of guiding principles, your first principles, if you will.

And I think Coach Carroll, he said that his philosophy is if you want to win, always compete. So I think he's kind of framed it in that short phrase. Have you codified it in such a short phrase like that as well for you personally?

Oh yeah. And you know, I would just want to put a note in here. It doesn't— if you do the work, let's say you're inspired by what we're talking about right now and you're like, oh, okay, I'm going to get mine down. And you just pull out a pad of paper and you start writing down your philosophy. It doesn't mean it has to be it forever. So my philosophy has upgraded over time. So 10 years ago it was different than it is today. And it feels really good what I'm about to share with you as my philosophy. Actually, it was more like 20 years ago. Wow, where does time go? So every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece. And so if you kind of pull that apart a little bit, every day— so I gotta be in it today— is an opportunity. Oh, okay, so there's some— there's an opportunity in here, you know. So there's optimism to create. I think the artistic expression to be human is one of the highest forms. It means you have a beautiful command of some skill. And a living, so an animated and alive masterpiece, which is what I would consider the highest art, a living masterpiece. And so there it is for me. Those are some of the things that are guiding my thoughts, my words, and actions. And if you wanted to add some other tones to it, I could certainly do that, which, you know, love is one of them. And love is embedded in that phrase for me. So is excellence. It's embedded in that phrase for me. Living masterpiece is like love and excellence in there. Then if I were to sharpen it one other level, I would say that creation piece is really a co-creation. Then we've got others. That's where relationship shows up for me. We don't create in a vacuum. We co-create living masterpieces. That's it. It's super crisp and clean and it makes a lot of sense to me. If you can do the same for you and it makes sense to you and when you are feeling stressed or fatigued or tired or anxious or whatever it might be, you're like, "Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on." What is my North Star here? What are my most clear and primary principles in life? And if you're not working against those things, you're working against something different, and it's a bit of a red herring, I would say.

Excellent. All right, well, there's so many things I want to talk to you about here, and I want to make sure— I think this is a good segue to talk about your Audible original, Compete to Create. So tell me what that is. How did that come about?

Coach Carol and I, we wanted to capture the insights that we had been working on together at the Seattle Seahawks for the past decade, and we wanted to share it with businesses. So we built an 8-week online course, and we're selling it inside enterprise corporations and small businesses. And then earlier this year, we rolled it out to individuals. So it's available to individuals for the first time. The same way we train elite athletes, you can train your mind now as well. And then we said, you know, let's, let's see if we can put it into a different form as well. And this is more the Compete to Create is more the stories, if you will, and some good applied practices. And the course is really roll up your sleeves and go to work. They're meant to be companions. If you were to pick one, I'd say just go straight to the course, and then the book after would be like a nice solid refresher of the stuff that you learned.

And so if someone wants to sign up for the course, how do they access that?

Well, let's do that competition, you know, and let's give a couple away. But the best way to do it is you can go to findingmastery.net. And there's a little button there that says course, and you can find all the information you need there.

Perfect. All right. So, I've got a couple more little segments that I want to do here before we wrap up. So, one is I'm going to mention the names of a few people that have been guests on your podcast. And I'm going to pretend I'm the psychologist here. And I want you to just tell me what first pops into your mind when I give you these names. Okay. So, the first one is Dr. Albert Bandura.

Legend. Game changer in the field of psychology. Introduced a theory that helps people become their very best across stressful conditions. Legend. That's Ben Dore, and it was an honor to sit with him. Man, just a beautiful mind. Beautiful mind. Beautiful heart too.

Okay, next one.

Rich Roll. Ultra. Vegan, you know, so humble and incredibly talented, and both in physical and intelligence. So he runs ultra marathons and ultra events. He was an attorney turned vegan slash ultra marathoner, so he left this legal life to kind of chase his passion. I love spending time with him. It's so good.

Dr. Krista Scott Dixon.

Smart, multi-dimensional. And so, Krista Scott-Dixon is— they've built out a nutrition program for people to get certified as nutritionists. And she's just so smart and so dynamic in that she doesn't see things linear at all. And she just always helps me remind me and appreciate that it's complicated, but we don't need to get lost in the complication. We just kind of stay the path and explore and You know, like, it's just a beautiful mind. Coach Carroll.

He's a competitor.

Win forever. Yeah, always compete. And so he is a dogged competitor that really is looking for the most dynamic, competitive ways to help people become their very best.

Let me give you one more here. And I mentioned the Esselen Institute earlier, and you had Michael Murphy on, one of the co-founders of the Esselen Institute. What have you learned from Michael?

Michael is one of the very rare deep thinkers who lives in full alignment between exploring the human experience and then putting it into frameworks so that the rest of us can understand the frontier that he's lived. He's a deep thinker and he's an explorer of human potential. And I mean, he was tier zero for kind of the epicenter of the conversations around consciousness, you know, 30, 40 years ago. I mean, the Esalen Institute is something special.

All right, so I've picked 2 or 3 quotes here from things that you've said here in the past, and I'm going to read the quote, and I'd love for you to make a comment on it. So this first one comes from a conversation that you had with Tim Ferriss, and you said, failure is not making a mistake. That's not failure. Failure is not being authentic. Failure is not going for it. Failure is being small.

I think I had to sort out my definition of failure because I couldn't get down with the definition that was handed to me. You know, like success and failure was more about scoreboard. And in business, that scoreboard is like deals hit or earnings or revenue points or whatever. And I didn't like that. I just felt it was such a reductionist model in sport to just look at the scoreboard and see success and failure. It's more complicated than that. It's not that at all. For me, failure is really the inability or the unwillingness to go for it. When you don't properly prepare yourself both in skill, in framework of body, like your body can't go for it or you don't have the skill to go for it or you don't have the mental abilities to go for it. Then I think we've run into a problem. That to me is what failure is, unwillingness or inability to go for it. What we end up doing, what's the experience around that is we either blame others or we play it safe and small. There is a time to play it safe. I mean, I don't want to be obtuse about this, but when we're playing it small, that is problematic. It's actually born out of my early experience as a young athlete, 15-year-old kid trying to sort out how to be a 15-year-old kid, but I had the inability to go for it in my sport. I was too concerned about what other people were thinking. I was too concerned about judgment and critique and not measuring up to other people that I found myself constricting and holding back and playing it safe and small. And because of that, I wasn't able— like, left unexamined, I wasn't able to do public speaking. I wasn't able to— and I just want to put a note on that. Most people don't do public speaking very well. They might get the words out, but when you watch them, they're like a wreck the first 15 minutes, and they're a wreck the first 30 minutes backstage, and they're, you know, overwhelmed by it the night before or the morning of when they can't even eat and enjoy their meal because they're later worried about what other people are going to think. And their system is so on and animated that they're actually missing life for what they think might happen later, which is the fear of judgment. And so most people do not do public speaking well, just as a note. And that's not because they don't have the intellect or they don't have the technical skills. It's that they don't have the courage to be themselves and to play and to get their points across. Because why don't they have the courage? Because they ultimately don't trust themselves. And why don't they trust themselves? Because they don't know how to speak to themselves. Well, why don't they have— know how to speak to themselves? Because they haven't investigated in an insight program, both from a self-discovery process or mindfulness, as we started this conversation with. So it's not that hard, but it takes time.. And I will say this to you, if I can do this, anybody can. There is incredible freedom in doing this internal work, incredible freedom. So I've gone from a 15-year-old kid that was absolutely riddled with anxiousness and self-critique. Cuz if I was afraid of the critique of others, the strategy was I would just be harder on myself. So I was looking for quote unquote perfect. And if it wasn't gonna be perfect, I'd just hold back. And then I was a mess. And so all of that got in the way of my late teens, early 20s, bled a little bit into my 30s. And then I was like, wait, hold on a minute. I've been studying this stuff now. Uh, I need to apply it at a better level. And so the last, I'd say since 28 on, I've been really doubling down, tripling down in the actual practice of this stuff. And so a long way for me to say there's more inside of most people. And with just a bit of investigation and mental skill training, those unlocks are unbelievable. And I love the science of psychology. I think it's a beautiful science and I love every part of it.

Excellent. One final quote here. You said, the more extreme the environment, the greater benefit clarity of purpose holds. When pain is greater than purpose, we give in to pain. When purpose is clear, we can override the discomfort to move to the expression of purpose.

Jeez, what was I thinking? It's so profound. Yeah, I think that there's a relationship between pain and purpose, and when purpose is not clear, pain is going to win. And so there's a science to purpose. There's 3 components to anchoring your purpose, and one is that whatever your purpose is, it has to matter to you, has to have meaning to you. Nobody can give you purpose, right? It doesn't matter to you. The second, it needs to be bigger than you. So it's not just about getting your needs met. And then the third, it is about a future orientation that there's something in the future where purpose that you're working towards. And so you have purpose now, it matters to you, it's bigger than you, and it's down the road you're working to solve or to do. And so, yeah, I think getting those two things right is really important, meaning your ability to know your purpose so that you can go into the thin herd space. Because in that thin herd, you're going to have to whack some stuff down and cut some paths. You're going to find some thorns and some bushes and some terrain that's difficult that will challenge you. Call it emotional pain, physical pain. Those are the two big ones. So, I think that if you can front-load your understanding of your purpose, you get ahead of increasing your tolerance to experience difficult things. And it's required to stay in it to go the distance. Yeah.

I mean, with that strong enough purpose, with that strong enough why, we can definitely withstand a lot of pain. I mean, that's been proven by many people over many, many decades and centuries. Yes. Well, Mike, we've talked about a lot here, and like I said, I could just talk forever with you. Is there anything else that you want to mention here that we haven't talked about yet before we wrap up?

I want to say thank you. You know, like, you've created a space here for me to go too long on every question. I know that, but I've appreciated the space. And so, no, thank you for including me in what you're doing. I'm super stoked to give that course away to your crew or two. Yeah.

So thank you, Steve. Yeah. Thank you. So Mike, what's the best way for folks to reach out to you if they want to connect with you?

Okay. So social media is fun. @MichaelGervais. And so it's Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, and then Gervais is G-E-R-V-A-I-S. And so social is the kind of the easiest way to do it. And then you can find everything on findingmastery.net.

As well.

Excellent.

All right.

Yeah.

And the podcast that you have is fantastic. So make sure those of you listening to this that you check out his podcast, Finding Mastery, as well. So, Mike, again, thank you. This has been fantastic. I appreciate your time. You've been so generous, and I appreciate the great body of work that you have put out there. It's helping me. It's helping so many people. And with this conversation we're having here today, we'll be reaching some more people as well.

So thank you.

Awesome. There are so many great insights here, but one thing that I want to highlight is this idea that there are 3 things we can train. We can train our body, our craft, and our mind. Now, we've gotten pretty good over the past decades in training our body and our craft, but when it comes to the mind, we have tremendous room for improvement. But what's cool here is we now have science that can tell us what we need to do so that we can be calm, confident, focused, and optimistic to meet the present moment regardless of what is being thrown at us. And don't forget to enter to win access to Michael Gervais' course on finding your best. To be eligible to win, simply do these two things. First, go to Twitter and make sure that you follow three people. Follow @MichaelGervais, follow @FindingMastery and also follow @BaronsAdvisor. And then second, send a tweet with a comment about this episode and make sure that you @MichaelJervais, @BaronsAdvisor, and also @SteveSandusky. Put that in the tweet so that I know that you've entered. Do this by February 24th and I'll randomly select 2 winners to receive free access to this Mindset training course. All right, that's all for today. Make sure that you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platform. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

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